In Penfolds Grange terms, $3000 for a 1959 vintage is a full tote odds price – no discounts in this game.

Its value is all about its rarity, coming from the first decade of Grange’s production.

No one was buying that bottle for the wine inside it.

Grange is Australia’s most gifted and most collected wine – and the wine Australians buy when they want to make a statement. Offer a special gift. Perhaps even be remembered for your generosity and personal touch - when the time is right.

What makes the ’59 that little more intimate in this case is it’s also Barry O’Farrell’s birth year. You would always remember that.

But in real wine terms the 1959 vintage’s value lies purely as a curio. It was one of the so-called “hidden vintages”, kept in the back rooms by its famous maker Max Schubert away from the Penfolds management who did not want to know about it in its early years.

Now it’s real evidence that Grange is a keeper, a wine that genuinely lasts the distance.

It was not, however, one of the greatest vintages, though in the latest official Penfolds assessment of the wine it’s described as “still holding up”.

Tasters in the seventh edition of the offical Penfolds wine guide, The Rewards of Patience, say those early Granges are “a fascinating study on a developing wine style”.

But when it comes to wines of that era, there are good bottles and bad bottles. The best have been sealed with a great cork and kept in perfect cellaring conditions.

If all went well in its 55 years maturation, it would have “still drunk well”, according to current Grange winemaker Peter Gago.

“It’s a wine that has surprised us, but it was never considered all that seriously,” Gago says.

For that, a real wine lover would be more respectful of a bottle of 1952, ’53 or ’55 Penfolds Grange.

At least its latest escapade in the circles of power has further cemented Penfolds Grange as Australia’s most famous wine.